Jen,
Its good to see you're back, I thought you had left us.
I've had satellite TV for about 10 years, now. Now its called Direct TV, but that wasn't the original system.
We rent the equipment, and our bill has never changed. The only service outages we've experiences have been during heavy rain and snow.
In the 10 years before getting the satellite system, our cable bill had doubled. Our neighbors report that cable rates have continued to rise.
I do miss the cable TV local weather, but thats a small price. And I can get local weather on any number of websites.